What is the Best OCR Software for Windows 11 PC 2026?

I recently started a project that involves digitizing a large volume of documents, ranging from clean digital PDFs to some older, slightly faded physical scans. While I tested a few basic online PDF OCR software, the results have been inconsistent, especially when it comes to maintaining the original page layout and handling data tables. I want the best ocr software for windows that prioritizes accuracy and batch processing. Ideally, the software should be able to handle multi-column text without garbling the reading order and offer some level of automation for processing entire folders at once. I am open to both one-time purchase pro software and high-quality open-source tools if they are user-friendly. I'd love to hear what has worked best for you regarding speed and the amount of cleanup required after the text is extracted.